We are very lucky to have a generous older neighbor on our street. Every year she invites kids from the street to come to her house and decorate gingerbread houses. I wanted to share a little about this tradition - perhaps someone will be inspired to host such a gingerbread house decorating party as a birthday present or a playdate.

Our neighbor has perfected her gingerbread party over years. She makes her gingerbread from scratch and bakes it still in November. Then, in early December, she assembles dozens of perfect little gingerbread houses. She invites people to bring their own candy to decorate the house, but she also provides an absolutely massive amount of various candy toppings as well as small toys and seasonal decorations. Ever year we wash inedible parts of a gingerbread house once we disassemble it and return them to her, so they can be used again.

This candy bounty certainly sparked Smarty's creativity, and it was interesting to see how this year she was determined to stay with a certain color theme. It's certainly a grand departure from younger years when she was mostly interested in eating candy. Not that she did not eat it (and icing too) this time around ;)

Our neighbor was kind enough to offer three different time windows for gingerbread house decorating to accommodate busy families of our neighborhood. Smarty actually had a kitchen all to herself while working on her masterpiece, which was nice, because she could focus on her work more. She was very pleased with her final result:

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